Cherokee Nation and Andrew Jackson

Preface

The Cherokee Nation and Andrew Jackson was submitted as partial fulfillment of
the requirements in United States History 1815--1919, a Graduate level
course, at Millersville University, fall 1996. If anyone would like to use
it in their research please email me.

John Keegan

September 2004

Paper in Word Format

Introduction

This paper will discuss The United States Government’s
dealings with, and the call for removal of the Cherokee Nation to west of
the Mississippi from 1829—1832. That time period was the height of the
Jackson era and the beginning of problems for the Cherokee Nation. The one
cause of problems for the Cherokee Nation was Paternalism. The need of white
Americans to civilize the Cherokee Nation, and to bring them to God.
Another was the problem of Cherokee self-government. Lastly, there was the
white Americans need for land.

The above were general areas of contention between the
Cherokee Nation and The United States Government. Specifically, this paper
examines the basis of Paternalism, Jackson’s view of the Indians as children
of The United States Government, and the Indian Removal Bill. In addition,
the problem that Georgia had with Cherokee self-government.

Indian policy based on Paternalism may have started as
simply guardianship of the Cherokee Nation and its lands in an effort to
bring them around to a Christian way of life, but in the end Paternalism was
the platform that the Jackson administration used to take their land and
ignore their rights.

The Basis of Paternalism

Before discussing Jackson’s view it is necessary to examine
some of the history that formed the basis of Paternalism toward the Indians.
In 1791 The Federal Government negotiated the treaty of Holston with the
Cherokee. It was a treaty of peace and friendship. It also set limits and
cession, specifying boundaries for the Cherokee Nation. The Holston treaty
bound the federal government to the duty of protection and guardianship over
these primitive people.1
Primitive, was the way most whites saw the Indians. As for the way whites saw themselves, American
society from the 1770’s to the 1900’s was experiencing the Enlightenment.
The country believed in the power of human reason to understand the
principles of nature law and set up society according to them. On the other
hand, as enlightened as the country was it was also very religious. A
commitment biblical truths was seen as necessary for the nation.2

Indian policy was formed, according to Prucha, upon three
basic principles. First, all man-kind was one, that all human beings were
created innately equal by God and were descendants from one set of parents,
Adam and Eve. Most whites, however, did not hold this view. Second, the
Indians were, because of their existing cultural circumstances, inferior.3
It is necessary to point out that whites of the late 1800’s and
early 1900’s were by no means multi-cultural. Whites looked at the Indians
from what they saw as a superior way of life. White saw Indian cultures with
primitive technologies, engaged in some limited agriculture, but still
dependent largely on hunting and gathering for food and the making of
clothes, and in need of guidance. White Americans were engaged clearing the
land and farming it. Although, most whites did not see Satan behind every
tree as the early Puritans did they did view Indian religious beliefs as
pagan. Whites also saw Indians as increasingly dependent upon trade for
goods such as guns, kettles, knives, and other metal implements.4

All the above leads to Prucha’s third basic principle: The
Indians’ culture could and should be transformed to equal or approximate
to their whites neighbors.5 Christians saw a need to reform
the Indians and bring to God using positive and sometimes forcible means.
This view was also held by United States Government without, however,
publicly calling for a change in the Indians’ religious views. According
to Gates, the government announced a strong desire to see the Cherokee
advance in the ways of civilization: to become herdsmen and cultivators,
instead of remaining in state of hunters.6

Paternalism at this point can be seen as over protective
parents looking after the needs of their under developed children. Again,
whites were by no means multi-cultural, but many whites were interested in
helping the Indians an example of this benevolent Paternalism was the
Brainerd mission school:

Staffed by educated New Englanders sent out by the
American Broad of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Boston, Brainerd
opened its doors to male and female Cherokee in 1817… The flourishing school
offered a curriculum that embraced Presbyterian doctrine and elementary
education for all, mechanical skills for males and household skills for
females.7

This mission school and others like it were attempts
by whites to live up to what they saw as their parental responsibility, for
as Thomas Jefferson stated in 1785: I believe the Indian then to be in body
and mind equal to the white-man. If Indians such as the Cherokee were
educated, Jefferson thought, we shall probably find that they are formed in
mind as well as body, on the same module with the `Homo sapiens Europaeus’.8

President Jackson’s View

It is clear that United States Government Indian Policy was
one of Paternalism, and it was based largely on the premise that Indians
were under developed, but could and should be assimilated, that is, given
the values and the belief system of the white culture, thus live in the most
civilized and technological advanced society possible. This society had, of
course, a market economy, and it was thought the Indians once assimilated
would do the capitalist thing. To put it another way, sell what they had to
better their place in society which was one of the many ideas the whites had
tried to teach the Indians. Well, that did not happen according to Rogin,
the market alone could not control them, for they could ignore, as
self-improving whites could not, its imperatives. They would not, to improve
their position, sell their land and move west.9 It was at that
point Paternalism turned dark.

President Jackson supported the prospect of Indian removal
which helped him gain an election victory among the southern states in 1828.
As stated above the Indians would not, to improve their position, sell their
land and move west. The problem was whites wanted land, so Jackson using the
cloak of Paternalism to promised, to rescue his `red children’ from the
advancing tide of white settlement in the east, protect them in the west,
and help them advance to civilization.10 One reason
Jackson was willing to move the Cherokee and other tribes west of the
Mississippi was he thought that land would be useless for agriculture.11
The point was to give the Cherokee and the other
Indians land that whites did not want, thus getting the Indians out of the
way. According to instructions from John H. Eaton Secretary of State to
Generals William Carroll and John Coffee 30 May 1829:

The President is of the opinion that the only mode left
for the Indians [Cherokee] to escape the effects of such enactments, and
consequences more destructive and which are consequent on their contiguity
the whites, is, for them to emigrate.12

In 1828 Georgia extended State law over the Cherokee
in its state. Jackson saw this a problem as stated above and saw the only
way to solve it was to move the Cherokee.

Again, the dark side of Paternalism was at work. The white
need to clear and cultivate land for settlement was all. The President
allowed that this progress destroyed the resources of the savage and doomed
him to weakness and decay.13
There was no thought of the
rights of the Cherokee on the part Jackson. He let settlers move in on lands
that were clearly Indian. Thus, Jackson could voice humanitarian concern as
a compelling basis for Indian removal; a concern actuated by feelings of
justice and regard for our national honor.14Jackson saw
what best for the Cherokee and the other tribes, and, to him, it was not
working with them to see that their rights were protected. While it was true
that removal was seen by Jackson and others as a way to protect Indians from
white settlers and white settlers from Indians there were other ways to do
the same. For example, Congress could have passed a bill that protected the
Indian lands within the boundaries of states from being settled by whites.
That idea was well within the basis of Paternalism, but never even tried,
most likely, because it would have sparked a debate over States rights vs.
Federal power.

Indian Removal Bill

Instead, in 1830 Congress began debate on the constitutional
and moral implications of Jackson’s recommendations.15
The fight in Congress fell along party lines. However, there were some
anti-Jackson leaders like Theodore Frelinghuysen who felt the Indians had
every right to their lands given to them by treaties, and it was legally
wrong for the administration to disregard or modify. The
Senator took to task Georgia officials for the extension of state law over
the Cherokee Nation which declared their government, their laws, and customs
void.16 It was clear, at least to Frelinghuysen and some
others, that the United States Government had a duty to protect the Cherokee
and their political and civil rights.

Still other anti-Jackson senators supported Frelinghuysen’s
argument and added their own. Many feared that any appropriations attached
to the bill might be used to enact forced removal or provide the means to
bribe chiefs into making agreements that married their people to the
administration’s policy. If the good faith of the Jackson administration was
questioned in the area of removal, it was because some congressmen and
senators felt that promises of a peaceful home in the West were not followed
up by any plains for subsistence or security.17 Senator
Ascher Robbins, according to Gates, questioned the very constitutionality of
the bill:

After all, there had been a long history of treaties
negotiated between United States Government and Indians. …Since the Indian
nations were held competent to make treaties, the proposed legislation was
not only in appropriate, but unconstitutional.18

The reason Senator Robbins thought the bill
unconstitutional was it seemed to be a new treaty, and that job was in the
area of the executive according to Article II Section two The President,
Shall have the power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to
make Treaties….19 Thus, the whole bill should not have come to either house
of congress without first having been negotiated with the Indian Nations
such as the Cherokee.

Supporters of the Removal Bill were not without breath. In
the forefront was John Forsyth former governor of Georgia who late 1828
urged the state legislature to pass an act that extended the laws of Georgia
over the Cherokee. In sum, the supporters position was the bill did not give
the President the right to remove the Cherokee people by force However,
those who opposed the bill shot back there was nothing in the bill that
spelled out the President could not use force if the Cherokee and the other
tribes did not emigrate.20Those in opposition to the bill had the good Paternalistic concern that rights of the Cherokee and the other
tribes were protected. And if the Jackson administration intended free and
voluntary removal there should be no objection to amendments which would
support it.21

Jackson and his supporters wanted latitude under the bill
which would allow them to use fair and what some would call unfair means,
thus they rejected any amendments that limited the actions the United States
Government could take to remove the Indians. The Removal Bill Passed the
Senate 28—19.22 The House passed the bill 94—94 the tie was
broken by the Speaker of the House. On 28 May 1830 Jackson signed the Bill
into law.

Cherokee Self-government

Georgia in 1828 passed a bill that extended the laws of the
State over the Cherokee, for in 1827 the Cherokee did two important things.
They set up a government and declared themselves an independent nation. The
bill voided all Cherokee laws and customs, also it declared ownership of all
Cherokee lands. The Cherokee appealed to The Supreme Court. In the case
Cherokee Nation v. Georgia 1831 John Marshall defined the legal relations
between the Indians and the United States Government. Marshall was faced
with the question; Do the Cherokee constitute a foreign state in the sense
of the Constitution?23 Marshall found the Indians to be in, A state of
pupilage; their relation to United States resembles that of a ward to his
guardian.24 That legal relationship was nothing more than a restatement of
Paternalism, but not the same Paternalism that pushed the Removal Bill
through Congress. As stated above, the bill called for voluntary removal of
the Indians, but did not spell out that force could not be used. It was
Paternalism more like the treaty of Holston, and Thomas Jefferson. Marshall
also found that, The Indians…have an unquestionable and heretofore
unquestioned right to the lands they occupy, until that right shall be
extinguished by a voluntary cession to our government.25

The above would seem to have narrowed latitude under the
bill which would allow the use fair and what some would call unfair means
that Jackson and his supporters wanted. Marshall was saying the United
States Government could not just take the land, which the Cherokee occupy
unless it was ceded. And yet that was just what United States Government
did, and Jackson let it happen. He did not, as the Constitution instructs in
Article II Section three, take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.26

Conclusion

Indian policy based on Paternalism may have started as
simply guardianship of the Cherokee Nation and its lands in an effort to
bring them around to a Christian way of life, but in the end Paternalism was
the platform that the Jackson administration used to take their land and
ignore their rights.